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Ice Age Trail (IAT) - 1,000 miles - View Gallery

Following the southernmost edge of the glacial flows that spread across Wisconsin during the last Ice Age, the Ice Age Trail (IAT) leads hikers through places where glaciers carved the scenery. For more than 1,000 miles within Wisconsin, the route of the Ice Age Trail offers an easy way to experience the grandeur of geology up close and on foot. Eskers, moraines, drumlins, and kettles become a part of your vocabulary when you hike this trail and marvel at its scenery.

Lawyer and mountaineer Raymond Zillmer envisioned a linear park that would follow the edge of continental glaciations. In 1958, he founded the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation to establish a national park in Wisconsin that would follow his proposed route. By 1961, a National Park Service study concurred that “one of the greatest stories in the natural history of North America” could be told by creating such a park. In the early 1970s, the Ice Age Trail Council began carrying out the vision, and by 1980, the trail-in-progress was designated a National Scenic Trail.

By winding along the glaciers’ leading edge, this is a trail for savoring the scenery, not for crossing the state quickly. From its eastern terminus at Potawatomi Lake on Green Bay, the Ice Age Trail follows the ancient shoreline of Lake Michigan past Manitowoc. From Kettle Moraine, the trail drops south past Milwaukee, loops around Madison, and heads up towards Baraboo, where Devil’s Lake State Park, a deeply cut glacial valley, is a popular destination. A loop in the trail offers exploration of the Wisconsin Dells and of glacial Lake Wisconsin. Drumlins (whale-shaped hills) and kettles (created by blocks of glacial ice melting) become common as the trail threads its way north. In the northern part of the state, forests of birch, maple, and hemlock lend bright colors to fall hiking. The trail winds its way west past lakes and bogs in the Harrison Hills, and through a wilderness of white pine and hemlock in Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest before reaching its terminus at the Minnesota border at Interstate State Park, Saint Croix Falls.

Long distance hikers have serious logistical challenges, with services as much as 20 miles from the trail and a variety of habitats and surfaces to plan for—open prairies, rock scrambles, gravel rail-trails, marshes and bogs. In some places, you’ll see no other hikers. Near communities, the trail can be swarmed with day hikers on weekends. There are many road walks, as the Ice Age Trail is very much a project in process, with only about half of the corridor protected by public lands. 

While managed by the National Park Service, the Ice Age Trail has come to life through the volunteer efforts of members of the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation. Trail protection proceeds with help from government and nonprofit partners, including The Nature Conservancy and the State of Wisconsin. Summer is the busy season for hikers and trail maintainers, who have a lot of trail to cover in a limited maintenance season. For more information, visit www.iceagetrail.org

“Fun Facts”
The Wisconsin Glaciation period occurred between 2.5 million and 10,000 years ago. It’s named for the state since Wisconsin has more glacial features than any other state along the glaciers’ path. At one point, it covered more than 2/3 of the entire state.

More than half the residents of Wisconsin live within 20 miles of the Ice Age Trail—even though the trail rarely passes through a town!